


Prologue

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Series: Mikkel's Story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Kudos: 7





	Prologue

The world ended not with a bang, nor yet with a whimper. The world ended with a rash.

The Rash began as a discoloration of the skin, an itch, a mere blemish, and ended in agonizing pain, limbs maimed and twisted and deformed, madness, coma, and merciful death … for the lucky ones. For the unlucky ones, it ended in transformation to a ravening monster, so hideously deformed as to be unrecognizable as human, whether mentally or physically. It was contagious not just to human beings, but to every mammal with the strange exception of cats.

And no mammal that contracted the Rash ever recovered.

The Rash was contracted from the breath of the infected for a week or more before any symptoms showed, from any bite, even from a scratch inflicted by the appendages of the infected, no longer even identifiable as hands or feet.

There were those, both human and animal, that were immune to the Rash. And there were those who, though not immune, survived by chance or by swift action, escaping to islands or mountain fastnesses which could be defended against the infected. Iceland closed its borders very early and survived almost without infection; the Danish island of Bornholm closed its borders later and suffered great losses before the infected were destroyed, and even then small pockets of infection remained. In the other Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, villages survived here and there where they could be defended. Several brutally cold winters ravaged these survivors but at the same time the bitter cold kept the infected at bay while more defenses were built.

The world was lost to the Rash. Humanity was reduced from its teeming billions to little more than a hundred thousand in the Known World.

And nine decades passed.


End file.
